Re: [Docutils-users] OT: DSV vs CSV

[Alan G I. <ai...@am...>]

On 10/17/2011 7:07 PM, Paul Tremblay wrote:
> the delimiter does not matter.
>
> If you think otherwise, can you please provide a concrete example


Parse this:
32.654,32

You won't know how unless I tell you what the delimiter is.

But of course the whole idea of a "concrete example" misses
the point.  A format is useful if I do not need to examine
the data to read it in without ambiguity.  Playing around
with the delimiters makes a mess of what could be clean.

*That* is the role of standards.
To remove such silly ambiguities.

And *that* is why DSV can never become a *standard*,
but CSV can.  And it is why people who care about
scientific data draw the distinction. (Although we
can imagine a DSV-like standard that uses the first
line to specify a delimiter.)

Alan